Voters send explosive message on gun control

Colorado citizens take major action in recall election

From WND.com, by Jack Minor, 09/11/13: DENVER – In a powerful message to lawmakers considering passing gun-control measures advocated by President Obama, voters in Colorado have recalled a pair of Democratic senators who helped push through a series of gun measures Obama had hoped to use as model legislation.

State Sen. John Morse gave his concession speech after he was trailing by four percentage points with 83 percent of the precincts reporting in.

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Morse, along with Sen. Angela Giron, were both targeted for recall following a series of party-line votes over a series of gun-control bills that were among the strictest in the nation.

When it became evident a recall of some Democratic lawmakers was a distinct possibility, the Democrats, who control both chambers in the state legislature quickly changed an election-reform bill to allow Colorado residents from outside the district to vote in the recall and other elections by providing and address and stating they were intending to move into the district.

In Pueblo, it now appears that Giron will also be recalled. Early results showed her winning 58 to 42 percent; however with over half of the ballots counted 57 percent are in favor of recalling Giron. The numbers are especially significant as Democrats in Giron’s district represent 43 percent of the registered voters compared to 23 percent for the Republican Party.

The election has seen its share of irregularities. Victor Head, who helped organize the recall said he observed one instance where a person came in with a yellow voter card that was mailed out to every registered voter in the district.

Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office issued a rule saying the cards in and of themselves were not a sufficient form of identification; however, his office was overruled by Denver District Judge Robert McGahey.

The judge ruled the cards are a valid form of voter ID saying, “With all due respect, this has got to be more valid than a bill from Public Service Co., a copy of a bank statement, a paycheck. This is a government-issued document based on information contained in the secretary of state’s own database.”

However, Head observed an incident that made it clear why Gessler attempted to require a form of ID besides the card.

“The election judge asked him what his birthdate was and it didn’t match what was on the card,” Head said. “It quickly became obvious that he was not that voter. While they caught this person, in many instances the election judges never questioned the cardholder.”

He went on to say Pueblo has also had incidents with election judges who were taking people’s ballots and feeding them into the machine without using the secrecy sleeve, enabling them to see how the individual voted.

“We would point this out to the election supervisor at the polling place and he told us it wasn’t a problem, and we told him yes it was. We then had to call the Secretary of State’s office and they would send someone down to show them how to use the secrecy sleeve. Then after a couple of days they would begin to look at the ballots again and we had to go through the same thing all over again. This is how it has been this whole election.”

Throughout the recall process, Democratic supporters of Morse and Giron attempted to thwart the recall process at every step.

After petition gatherers turned their signatures into Gessler’s office, petition signers found themselves the subject of a series of intimidating tactics attempting to get them to recant their signatures for recalling Giron and Morse.

“People who signed the petition received a phone call from a live person asking them if they wanted to remove their signatures from the petition,” Head explained. “This was followed up by two different mailers which contained a postcard that people could send back asking for the removal of their signatures from the petition and then after that they sent people to go door-to-door to visit the people who signed the petition.”

Head said the pressure by Giron supporters was approaching harassment.

“I had one woman who told me she had nine missed phone calls from Pueblo United For Angela while another woman said she had four phone calls and two door knocks in a single day,” he said. “While they are not technically breaking any laws, the constant follow-ups is almost borderline harassment.”

Head said with Morse’s defeat, even a close race in Pueblo would equal a victory for the rights of the people.

“We were outspent nearly 20 to one and the election rules were changed by Democrats to make it easier to commit voter fraud. In spite of all this Morse lost his seat,” Head said. “Regardless of what happens with Giron, the fact we were able to get this far is in and of itself a victory for the people of this state.”

“This sends a powerful message that elected officials can still be held accountable by the people. This should send a message to other politicians who favor gun control that they will be in for the fight of their life for going against the will of the people.”

This type of victory at the ballot box is only possible when the ballot is a single issue ballot, as this special election was. It was possible only because of the Initiative and Referendum/Recall laws in Colorado. The same laws are in effect in our neighboring states of Oklahoma, Arkanas, and Missouri. These laws allow the people to decide what is best for them, in spite of what their political hack elected officials think.

The name of the vet that wrote this letter is Bill Schoonover, and it was written on April 3rd, 2013. Even though his representatives in Congress will probably never take the time to read this letter, I think that you will agree that the emotions that Mr. Schoonover has expressed in this letter are shared by millions upon millions of other Americans all across the country…

Dear Senator:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt important – honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of our various governments. I have served my country, paid my taxes, worked hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and artifacts.

Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at my country and my government. I shall only point out a very few things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year! Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.

Last year, the president spent an estimated 1.4 $billion on himself and his family. The vice president spends $millions on hotels. They have had 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of Representatives and Senate have become America ‘s answer to the Saudi royal family. You have become the “perfumed princes and princesses” of our country.

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. “Obama Care,” a bill which no more than a handful of senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the “one percenters,” consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (for which, of course, you plan to blame the Republicans, anyway).

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know – (1) How to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote ) who are looking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called “safety net” has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps – pretty much all Democrat voters – and the program is absolutely rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional oversight?

I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the second oldest profession (politics), bears a remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.

As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 – 1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” I’m only guessing that this applies to the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than Congress?

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use, and what health care we must buy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the consumer more and more every day.

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me “You’ll just have to take a pill,” while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.

The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might be generated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe that you, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares. This letter will, however, go on line where many others will have the chance to read one person’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $17 trillion national debt for which your children and ours, and your grandchildren and ours, ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up the tab.

My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to destroy this country I deeply love and put it so far in debt that we will never pay it off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your power. For you, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.